theg from Nature by G. Scharf

Panied by Hallmandel & Walion.

folded beds (c) consists of an osseous conglomerate, in which I found several rolled cetaceous remains; and I purchased from a fisherman residing near the promontory a fossil skull, which he told me had fallen out of this conglomerate upon the beach below. It retained but a small portion of the original animal matter, was slightly rolled, and Mr. Owen recognised it as the cranium of a Walrus, or Morse, nearly allied to the existing species (Trichecus Rosmarus, Linn.). On comparison, it was observed to differ from it, in having six molar teeth, instead of four, on each side of the upper jaw. There are eleven specimens of the recent species in the College of Surgeons, in all of which there are no more than four grinders on each side. The tusk, also, of the Gayhead fossil has a rounder form than that of the recent Morse. (See plate V.)

Near Chilmark, on the S.W. side of the island, I found the same beds as at Gayhead, in a still more disturbed state. Upon the whole, the organic remains, especially the sharks' teeth, lead me decidedly to the opinion that the strata belong to a part of the tertiary series newer than the Eocene, to which they were formerly referred. They must be at least as modern as the Miocene marls of Virginia and Maryland, before described (p. 134). Several of the sharks' teeth are specifically identical with the fossils of those marls, and of the Faluns of Touraine and the Suffolk crag; and there are no greensands either of the Eocene or cretaceous periods in Martha's Vineyard, as some have conjectured. These conclusions, in regard to the modern date of this formation, are interesting, because, but for this small island, we should have had no evidence

206

MARTHA'S VINEYARD.

CHAP. XII.

of the development of a great series of subterranean movements in this part of the American continent. The disturbances in question occurred between the Miocene epoch and the Boulder period; and we know not how far their influence may have extended over the hypogene rocks of New England.

The tertiary clays and sands of Martha's Vineyard are for the most part deeply buried beneath a mass of drift (d, Fig. 6.), in which lie huge erratic blocks of granite, often from twenty to thirty feet in diameter, which must have come from the North, probably from the mountains of New Hampshire. This covering of granitic detritus imparts to the soil a sterile character totally different from that which would naturally belong to the tertiary clays and marls.

I alluded to some Indians settled near Gayhead, a remnant of the aborigines, who have been protected by the Government of Massachusetts, all sales of land by them to the whites being null and void by law. They make excellent sailors in the whale-fishery of the South Seas, a source of great wealth to the inhabitants of "the Vineyard," and of New Bedford on the main land. That occupation, with all its privations and dangers, seems admirably suited to the bodily constitution and hereditary instinct of a hunter tribe, to whom steady and continuous labour is irksome and injurious.

The history of the extermination of the aboriginal Indians of New England is a melancholy tale, especially after so many successful exertions had been made to educate and christianize them. When at Harvard College, a copy of the Bible was shown me by Mr. Jared Sparks, translated by the missionary Father

Elliott into the Indian tongue. It is now a dead language, although preached for several generations to crowded congregations.

On my return across the Vineyard from Gayhead I saw several spotted tortoises with red heads migrating from one pond of fresh water to another. On the seashore another novelty attracted my notice-several large specimens of the King Crab (Limulus polyphemus) were crawling about in the salt-water pools left by the sea on the retiring of the tide.

208

BOSTON.

CHAP. XIII.

CHAPTER XIII.

Meeting of Association of American Geologists at Boston.-Popular Libraries in New England.-Large Sale of Literary Works in the United States.-American Universities.-Harvard College. near Boston.-English Universities.-Peculiarities of their Sys tem.-Historical Sketch of the Causes of these Peculiarities not of Medieval Origin.-Collegiate Corporations.-Their altered Relation to the English Universities after the Reformation.-Constitution given to Oxford by Leicester and Laud-System of Public Teaching, how superseded by the Collegiate. -Effects of the Change.—Oxford Examination Statute of 1800.—Its subsequent Modification and Results.—Rise of Private Tutors at Oxford and Cambridge. Consequences of this Innovation.-Struggle at Oxford in 1839 to restore the Professorial System.—Causes of its Rejection.—Tractarianism.—Supremacy of Ecclesiastics.—Youthful Examiners.-Cambridge.—Advocacy of the System followed there.-Influence of the English Academical Plan on the Cultivation of the Physical Sciences, and all Branches of Progressive Knowledge.-Remedies and Reforms.

April 25.-I returned to Boston to attend the third annual meeting of the Association of American Geologists, who had held their previous meetings of 1840 and 1841 at Philadelphia. On the present occasion Dr. Morton took the chair, and in the course of the week papers were read and freely discussed on a variety of scientific questions by many of the leading American geologists, some of whom had come from distant parts of the Union. The patronage afforded by the state surveys has created a numerous class both of practised observers and able writers. Among those engaged in these government undertakings, who took